[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public!Filmateleven.

[Charlie Stross]

On 6 Jun 2005, at 05:13, Brett Paatsch wrote:

>> The sub-text of the entire “human life begins at 10^6 cells/^10^3/1  
>> cell” debate is that a *potential* life is worth as much, if not 
>> more,  than the *actual* life of the woman who is expected by the  
>> anti-abortion lobby to go through a somewhat hazardous medical  
>> condition (which, in the wild, has a 5-10% fatality rate) and then -- 
>>  this is implicit in the whole mess -- spend the next twenty years of 
>>  life surrendering their potential for self-actualization to that 
>> other  formerly potential person.
>
> That sentence is too hard for me to parse. I think you are strawmanning
> the views of those who I disagree with as well but I can't tell.

Um, I was taking you initially for one of the "every sperm is sacred 
(and you women had better look after them)" crowd. Not having run into 
you on the net before.

> As for the 5-10% fatality rate thats a higher statistic than the ones I
> have, do you have a source for it?

Well, you don't have to look far on the net -- go back to Semmelweis in 
1847 and he found a 12.24% mortality rate among 294 deliveries in a 
Viennese hospital, prior to his introduction of antisepsis there. Okay, 
so admittedly we've currently got antibiotics and medical intervention 
that reduces the infant mortality rate to roughly 10-20 per 1000 and 
maternal mortality isn't a noted issue -- at present. But I'm not going 
to bet on antibiotic resistance being held at bay much longer, given 
the way we've criminally failed to develop new antibiotics, retain 
traditional antiseptic nursing techniques, and over-used those 
antibiotics we have.


>> ........................................Who then gets to do the whole 
>> same thing (if  they’re female) or benefit from all that hard work 
>> (if they’re not).
>>
>> As a non-American who lives in a country where at the last poll just 
>> short of 90% of the population approved of abortion being available 
>> on demand, let me say that I think this discussion would be ludicrous 
>> if  it wasn’t evil.
>
> So what are you a Canadian living in the US or what?

British, living in the UK. (In the People's Republic of Scotland, to be 
precise.)

...
> Its ironic, but when you posted to the list recently you said that you
> were irked I think that there was so much ranting going on. But now
> I am struggling to understand what points you are trying to make
> because you seem to have decided to rant along with us.
>
> When you use words like evil I don't know if you are parodying the
> US President or if you actually really think in such terms yourself.

See "British", above, and consider the possibility that a Manichean 
view of the world ain't part of my outlook. Britain and the US are two 
nations divided by a linguistic sar-chasm.

(Although if I was going to try and bolt together a post-religious 
rationalist ethical framework based on game theory with a side-order of 
utilitarianism, I think I'd probably retain the word "evil" to describe 
ideologies or beliefs that amount to repeatedly smacking yourself in 
the face with a two-by-four. And the Christian fundamentalists are a 
good fit for that pattern of behaviour.)



-- Charlie